The Day the Light Stepped Aside

The eclipse is not here. It is in Spain.

Today the moon crosses the sun over southern Europe and half the world is travelling to stand beneath it. I am not. I am reading about it from here, the way you read about a wedding you were not invited to but are glad is happening.

It has been a strange season for the sky. Parts of Europe are burning. England and Wales are cracked with drought. Cape Town went through its own thirst not long ago. And now, into all of that, a few minutes of deliberate darkness at noon.

I did not expect to feel anything. I did.

There is something humbling about a sky that does what it likes. We fill our days with lists and screens and the small tyranny of the next thing. Then the sun simply steps behind the moon and none of it matters for a moment. You look up. You go still. You remember you are standing on a rock that is turning.

Awe is just attention with the volume turned up.

I think that is what the old people knew, the ones who marked eclipses on stone. Not fear exactly. Reverence. A reminder that we are small and it is beautiful to be small inside something this large.

So wherever you are today, in Spain under the shadow or here under an ordinary sky, look up for a moment. Remember you are standing on a rock that is turning. It will not last. That is the point. The best things rarely do.